I have read several articles and all the "experts" say that worrying about worn out springs is a waste of time. Personally I have 2 autos that I leave loaded all the time to max capacity and have never had a problem.
But my guess is if you are the type of person to worry about it, you are probably also the type of person to be at the range often enough to notice a problem before it becomes an issue.

Rotate only when smell and mold become evident. Other wise let things be as they are. Compressing and decompressing the magazine spring is what will cause a spring to wear out/fatigue.
Springs will not go bad from being compressed and the ammo will not go bad if kept in the magazine.

Quote:

So much nonsense and bad science in this thread

It must be true I read it on the internet and the TFL!
How true your quote

Didn't see any mag springs compared to valve springs. I see lots of claims that the springs where out from compression / decompression. This failure mode for a spring, called fatigue, is not likely to occur in a magazine spring with it's very slow rate of compression and decompression and, even under heavy use, a very small number of cycles compared to what a spring is designed for. I would guess the shock from firing is harder on the spring than the cycling itself is. The valve spring was mentioned as an example of where spring fatigue is of great concern, where a spring may be fully cycled over 50 times a second and a cycle may take a few milli-seconds. It's used as a differentiator, not a comparison ... an example of why I don't think spring fatigue from cycling should greatly affect a magazine spring. What I have seen first hand with most magazines is how hard it is to get that last round in when they're new. They loosen up over time and I believe it is from the heavy spring compression each time you push in the last couple of rounds, each time it relaxes the spring a little more. I believe if you want your springs to last the longest, don't load the last couple of rounds and leave them there.

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597 VTR, because there's so many cans and so little time!

Last edited by pgdion; August 25, 2010 at 10:01 AM.
Reason: Fixed math (divided by 6 not 60 ... ooops)

Personally, I treat my magazines like any other machine - as parts that are going to wear out one day. I would like to tell you that I just use them and replace them when they are no longer working as desired.

In actual practice, I have a big pile of magazines (AR mostly; but a few others) that are no longer reliable that I keep around and try to fix. Left over habits from the ban era when that was a worthwhile approach. Considering what it costs to by quality components to rebuild a magazine (assuming the actual mag body isn't the problem), you are almost always better off trashing the non-working magazine and buying a quality new magazine.

Not to mention you avoid the irritation of the bad magazines working their way back into your "good" magazine pile. I swear those little bastards grow legs and sneak across the room at night.

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